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Zalea Tabris
After rescuing Shianni and killing Vaughan, the city guard comes to the Alienage for Zalea and Soris. Soris steps forward and takes the blame for it, telling Zalea that Shianni and the others were going to need her in the coming days. People wouldn't be happy that Alienage elves had slain the Arl of Denerim's son - even if it had been for a good reason. Soris gets taken away and Zalea spends most of her time trying to help Shianni recover and training. She's a dual blade rogue. I'm thinking that one weapon is always Fang, which she smuggles in with her when she gets transported and hides it away for a long, long time. The other dagger, at least when she initially escapes, will just be some kind of enchanted knife that the magisters use for their blood magic rituals. Once she's escaped with Fenris she'll get a proper set of blades and keep Fang as a keepsake on her belt. Anyways, when the Tevinter "healers" come, everyone's suspicious but doesn't really say anything at first because everyone's kind of in a panic as well. But then they take Valendrian and the hahren never returns, which makes everything infinitely worse. Zalea pretends to be sick and tries to investigate, but doesn't escape fast enough and hasn't a hope against the mages. She gets shipped off to Tevinter with only the clothes on her back and Fang, which she sneaks by strapping it beneath her trousers. Once they get there, the slavers mention that she's got some fight in her. Danarius happens to be browsing and buys her on a whim, deciding it's been too long since he had an elven slave with some spine. He hasn't tracked down Fenris quite yet. Zalea pretends that she isn't a trained fighter and quietly buries Fang in one of the trees in the courtyard her first night there. She then spends the next 4 years (Ostagar is 9:30 and the Archdemon is slain 9:31, thus Zalea would have been taken away at some point between the two. Act III of DA2 begins approximately at the end of 9:34 and we're going to assume it takes a bit of time to travel to Tevinter so Fenris would arrive at the very beginning of 9:35) being Danarius's slave. Slaves with some spirit left in them are extraordinarily useful if you have the patience to put up with them. Most magisters don't, but Danarius finds it amusing, and the ones with the will to fight are the best for draining for blood magic. They don't die as easily and they're able to take more pain than the weaker slaves. Thus, if you continuously drain a strong slave for rituals and such, as long as you stop at a certain line, they can recover and you can use them again. It's a decent investment and this becomes Zalea's purpose in Danarius's household. He has a number of slaves for draining purposes - large amounts of the weaker ones for sacrificial rituals, and three slaves like her (including her) who have been labeled as possible threats. (aka they're all fighters, Zalea claims not to be trained but anyone who looks at her can see she has some amount of muscle and is more dangerous than the usual sickly Alienage elves) They are kept under high surveillance and in special cages/rooms on one of the higher floors. The three of them are all different species - a female human, a male Qunari who Danarius likes the best because of the whole Qunari/Tevinter war (yes Danarius is a sadistic fuck) and Zalea. The human has been there the longest and is the weakest of them at this point, her will to live severely depleted. She's just about reached thrall status and so the other two don't really pay attention to her - she never talks, barely even moves. The Qunari is the strongest, a captured arvaarad whose enslavement by magisters amuses Danarius to no end. I told you, he's an asshole. Arvaarad and Zalea become friends...of a sort. They're friends like the Warden and Sten are friends. (lol@me referencing warden!Zalea and Sten's epic bromance) When Fenris is brought back, Danarius temporarily sticks him up on the same floor as those three. He's not going to let Fenris be anywhere near weapons until the memory wiping ritual is completed, even if Fenris seems to have become compliant again. Zalea hears whispers from the other, older slaves - and from Arvaarad himself - about what Fenris once was, and how he escaped Danarius for so many years. Arvaarad tries to prompt the other warrior (Zalea, after many long hours of discussing the Qun, decided it wasn't worth it to admit to Arvaarad that she actually does know how to fight) into talking, but of course Fenris doesn't respond. Zalea talks at him and her voice, still strongly tinted with a Ferelden accent, breaks through Fenris's haze. The Abomination had the same accent, as did Aveline. And Hansel Hawke, the one person he thought he could trust in Kirkwall who turned on him. Eventually Fenris can be convinced to make another run for it - when he is taken to the ritual room, the human woman, Zalea and Arvaarad as well as a number of the weaker sacrificial slaves are brought in to power it. Fenris ambushes Danarius mid ritual with a phased hand to the heart, tearing it out of the Magister's chest. Arvaraad uses his abilities to force the weaker apprentice mages in the room into submission, and Zalea, recovering Fang from where she'd buried it years ago, kills the ones that Arvaraad does not manage to get. The human woman, after long moments of stupor, tells Zalea to break the manacles on her wrists. All 3 of them had them - Zalea's were heavily weighted, Arvaraad's meant to block his abilities, (Fenris helped them switch before the ritual, since what was weighted for Zalea does absolutely nothing to a Qunari and templar-ability-blocking manacles do nothing against a rogue elf) and it turns out the human woman, named Eleni (after Eleni Zinovia) was a former apprentice of Danarius's who was turned into a slave when she refused to turn to blood magic. Her manacles block her magic, and with them removed, the four of them escape Tevinter. Eleni goes to Nevarra, deciding that Cumberland, as a meeting place for non-Tevinter mages, might be a place where she could live in peace and perhaps find someone to teach her who would not force blood magic upon her. Arvaarad returns to to Seheron, where he was first captured, in order to return to his duties. His saarebas was killed in battle, but there are others that need to be watched. Zalea has quite possibly maybe begun crushing on Fenris, who is everything an Alienage elf (like she would have been married off to) is not. Fenris wants to go back to Kirkwall to reveal Hansel Hawke for what she is and make her pay for handing him back to Danarius. Zalea agrees to go with him - for all she knows, her family back in Denerim is dead and the last thing she wants to do is go back to the Alienage. The whole world is open to her now, and she wants to see everything. So she goes with Fenris. ...What happens to the 2 of them once they arrive and realize everything has gone to fucking hell is unknown. Also not sure how much of recent events Zalea knows - she was used and slaved for quite a few years and I imagine almost entirely isolated except for Eleni and Arvaraad. I'm guessing she probably knows the Blight is over, but nothing about how it ended or what happened to Loghain and the Wardens, and certainly nothing about the Qunari in Kirkwall or the whole mage/templar war. She was isolated in an Alienage for minimum 18 years and then enslaved in the Tevinter Imperium for another 4-ish so...she probably is going to be really oblivious or unknowing of some things. Physical Appearance its a little lighter colored than that though, it's like a light/bright sort of auburn color. it was shorter before, but as she travels with fenris it starts growing out and she lets it to try and feel feminine again. she's got a bit of a self image complex due to what is below. she has a scar across her right ear and countless, large scars all over her body from her years in danarius's estate. they're not cool looking, like they would be in some level of moderation but hers just look like a drake tore her apart, let the wounds scab over, and started again. which is basically exactly what happened for four years. they start from the shoulders down though, because danarius didn't like having ugly people in his household. i mean, she's not ravishingly beautiful, but her face is unscarred and she's pretty normal looking besides having really nice eyes (greenish-brown, not hugely face swallowing like merril's but enough that she could probably tie with fenris in a puppy eyes contest.) some of the scars make physical activity uncomfortable for her - she can't stretch some limbs the way she used to, sometimes in the middle of the night the scars will just hurt for no reason at all. it's frustrating when she wants fenris's attention - his admiration, whatever - because he ends up having to help her more often than not and she hates feeling like a burden to him. she wants him to respect her, not think of her as someone he needs to take care of. she can't fight as easily as she used to and it's even worse once she gets full armor (half for practicality, half because the armor is beautiful and it covers everything from the neck down and so nobody can see) because all that metal is significantly heavier than what she's used to. she's lost a lot of strength after continuously losing blood and her endurance is basically shit, and what kind of rogue is she if she can't even move in shadows and sneak around properly without feeling like her scars are going to tear apart again? a terrible one.